It is hard to believe that we are at the end of the Go_Girl summer term! The last eight weeks have far exceeded everyone’s expectations in terms of the young women’s progress. They are very much on the way to ascertaining their goals and achieving them, and should feel really proud of all of the hurdles that they have overcome in recent months. For the summer finale we began by watching a selection of fascinating TedTalks, which explored some of the topics we’ve been covering so far. In particular, Jennifer Doudna’s TedTalk on human DNA alteration was a brilliant watch. It showed us all how coding is not just relegated to computers, but that also our own bodies are made up of complex patterns. Cracking the code of the genome has hugely beneficial potential in terms of treating genetic disease, but Jennifer was also keen to open up some of the ethical dilemmas that ‘editing’ our genetic make-up could hold. The Go_Girls all said that they found the discussion interesting – a great intro to the sequence-based programming we’ll be doing next term. With their new laptops in hand, they will be able to look up all kinds of information over the summer break too – perhaps even a few more Ted videos!

To end the session the young women created vision boards to help them on their way to achieving their aspirations. Visualising success has been proven to play a major role in the actual attainment of success. Sports psychologists, for example, have proven that athletes who imagine winning races then actually go on to get the fastest times. With this in mind, the Go_Girls set about mapping their dreams for the future.

Some of the young women hope for a family, others to travel the world. Many of the Go_Girls explored their ideal careers, and the steps they hope to take to make them a reality. It was such a fun and creative way to welcome the summer holidays. With their new laptops in hand, the young women are excited to begin exploring job and further study possibilities. We can’t wait to catch up with them again in August on our group trip to the seaside.

At a glance

go_girl: code+create is a project at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, run in partnership with the Oxfordshire County Council's Early Intervention Service. In line with Oxford’s targets in its Access Agreement with the Office for Fair Access, this interdisciplinary project complements existing programmes aimed at widening access to the University of Oxford, but tackles the problem in a fundamentally new way using technology. The research was originally supported by the University of Oxford IT Innovation Challenges Seed Fund and has received subsequent funding from Goldman Sachs Gives.